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Afghan election: It's all about Karzai
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-18 09:59

The prospect of a second five-year term for a wartime president widely seen as ineffectual and indecisive is greeted more with resignation than enthusiasm among Western governments that wereonce Karzai's strongest champions and helped engineer his rise to power after the US-led invasion overthrew the Taliban in 2001.

Afghan election: It's all about Karzai

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week that the US would work with "whomever the people of Afghanistan select" but would be "very specific about what we need to see coming" from the next administration - including a vigorous campaign against corruption.

Karzai dismisses many of the Western complaints about his leadership, saying the West would prefer a compliant Afghan leader to one who challenges his international partners publicly on such issues as airstrikes, civilian casualties and imprisoning Afghans without charge.

"When Hamid Karzai was quiet and there was no trouble between us, Hamid Karzai was a good man," he joked last month. "And now that there is a little trouble, he's a bad man."

Strengths or weaknesses?

James Dobbins, who served as US President George W. Bush's first envoy to Afghanistan, believes the personality traits that won Karzai praise when the war began are the same ones that he is faulted for now.

"Karzai is a conciliator and a unifier," says Dobbins, now an analyst with the RAND Corp. "He's not the kind of decisive and energetic figure who can push through controversial programs and discipline fractious or corrupt supporters."

Although Karzai himself has not been accused of corruption, allegations that his younger brother Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in the drug trade have circulated in Kabul for years. The younger Karzai denies the allegations.

Karzai's decision last April to pardon five convicted drug leaders, including the nephew of a close political ally, enraged Western officials working to combat drug trafficking and was seen as a bid to draw votes.

Rise of a leader

Criticism of Karzai stands in marked contrast to the adulation that surrounded his rise from obscure Afghan exile living in Pakistan to the leader of an impoverished nation devastated by a generation of war.

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Karzai, the son of a Pashtun tribal chief, broke with the Taliban after he became concerned the movement was falling under the influence of foreign Islamic extremists such as Al-Qaida. He refused an offer to become the Taliban-government's UN ambassador and moved to Pakistan in 1995.

Karzai was chosen at an international conference in Germany in December 2001 to lead a transitional post-Taliban administration, and won a full five-year term in an election three years later.

Karin von Hippel, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes some critics are too quick to blame Karzai for mistakes committed by the US and its allies, that diverted resources from Afghanistan to Iraq after Taliban rule collapsed in 2001.

"We have a lot to answer for in terms of the short-term gains versus long-term objectives," von Hippel said.

AP-Reuters-China Daily

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